Q&A: Annie Clark of St. Vincent on Her Marilyn Monroe Fascination and the Definition of Selling Out

According to Catholic.org (where you can sign up for Saint-of-the-Day e-mails—worth it), St. Vincent de Paul is the patron saint of charitable societies. You may also know him as the namesake of the erstwhile Greenwich Village hospital—and there’s the indie musician St. Vincent, the petite, curly haired Annie Clark, self-christened as such after a Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds lyric ". . . and Dylan Thomas died drunk at St. Vincent’s hospital.”

Clark’s most recent album, Strange Mercy,was released last month, and we’ve got the 4AD session music video for the track, “Year of the Tiger,” right here. Clark was inspired by a Shirley Bassey performance of “This Is My Life” on Rai Uno (an Italian television station) in 1968. Click above to view, and while you’re jamming, read below to hear about Clark’s take on the state of indie music, the definition of “selling out,” and her fascination with the handwritten letters of Marilyn Monroe. Highlights from our chat:

VF Daily: There were some teaser trailers for the album, one of which showed newborn kittens suckling a mother cat as a sophisticated British narrator says, “It is not uncommon for a mother feline to eat or kill her young if they are sick.” When I watched that I thought, What the hell is this?

Annie Clark: I know! [Strange mercy] is that thing that exists in life and nature that’s simultaneously beautiful and brutal. The kitten one was my favorite. We got to riff on this Werner Herzog thing. And it’s true—what’s better, to have a baby kitten who basically won’t be able to fend for itself and live a life of pain, or take it out in one fell swoop? I don’t know.

I can see the headline already: “Annie Clark on Killing Kittens.”

Oh my God! Of course. It’s always going to come out bad—no matter what I say, it’s not going to be good.

Was there anything you were reading or watching when you were writing this album? I remember reading that you said “Actor” was written after you watched a bunch of old Disney movies, but also Badlands.

There are bits of pop culture all over the record. The first song takes its title from an Eric Rohmer film,[Love] in the Afternoon.And “Surgeon” takes its chorus from a line in Marilyn Monroe’s diary, where she writes, “Best finest surgeon—Strasberg to cut me open.” She was studying with Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio at the time, and I was particularly inspired by her relationship with him.

How did you come across her letters?

You know what’s funny—I was reading Vanity Fair. I was writing the record in Seattle and I was feeling kind of frustrated, like “Oh, nothing great is coming out”—these typical things that you go through when you’re writing: moments of elation and extreme self-doubt. I said, Nothing is coming out. I’m just going to leave the studio early today, get a glass of wine and read a book, a magazine, and have dinner alone and clear my head. So I picked up Vanity Fair and was completely absorbed by that article on Marilyn.I wrote down that quote in my little book and the next day wrote the song.

Is there anything you’re listening to lately—your own music? Do people do that?

I only listen to my own music when I’m playing an hour-and-half set each night. I don’t put it on recreationally. “You guys listen up, aren’t I killing it?” Oh God, no. To be honest, because there’s loud music in my ears probably three hours a day, between sound check and the show, I listen to podcasts more than I listen to music on the road. I listen to This American Life. I’ve been watching a lot of Joan Didion interviews on YouTube. I love her. My drummer has gotten me into looking at Terence McKennainterviews.

I wanted to ask you about indie bands in commercials—for example the New Pornographers have a song on a commercial for the Kindle. Is that selling out?

If this were 20 years ago and people were making a living off of record sales and touring—and I’m not talking about a crazy living; I mean a respectable living—if those avenues were still any source of income. . . The question and the barometer of “selling out” is just different these days, because there aren’t as many ways to make money doing [music]. I guess I tend to fall on the practical side of things, which is: if the New Pornographers want to be in a Kindle commercial, I’m psyched for them and I hope they got paid and I hope they get to live in their modest apartment in whatever city. It’s not a question of greed as much as it’s a question of survival.